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29th Mar 2024

Restaurants and hotels worried by EU data bill

  • Small business such as hotels oppose the European Parliament's draft data bill (Photo: Biblioteca de Arte / Art Library Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

Small businesses such as bed and breakfasts or cafes will have to hire a data protection officer (DPO) under new rules currently being fine-tuned by the European Parliament.

The parliament says any business that has 500 or more clients a year will require a data protection office to make sure data is secured and laws are being followed.

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But small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) say this is an unwelcome additional expense in an economy where many are struggling.

The European Commission in its impact assessment report estimates that an SME would have to pay around €1,000 extra each year to have someone ensure protocol is met.

The commission had proposed exempting businesses with fewer than 250 employees from having to hire a DPO, but parliament scrapped the exemption and introduced the 500 clients threshold.

“The commission made an exception for SMEs and they had a reason for that,” said Marta Machado, a policy advisor at the Brussels-based Hortrec, an umbrella organisation for hotels, restaurants, and cafes in Europe.

An average SME in Europe has less than 16 employees. Many others have only one person.

German Green Jan Philipp Albrecht, the lead negotiator on the file at the European Parliament, amended the commission’s draft to include any business with at least 500 or more clients or "data subjects."

A data subject is anyone who has their data processed. Reservation dates, names, addresses and credit card details are among the data a hotel uses to process information on its clients.

Keeping those details in check and making sure they are properly secured is among the tasks of a DPO.

But Dora Szentpaly-Kleis, a legal advisor at the Brussels-based European Association of craft, small and medium-sized enterprises (Ueampe), told this website: “Our problem is not that he [Albrecht] changed the approach because it might make sense to link the number to the data subject but we have the impression that the 500 is a very low number.”

“How did they assess this number because there was no interaction on this issue between the rapporteur and us,” says Szentpaly-Kleis.

A parliamentary source familiar with the file said the number "was open to negotiation."

Germany only member state with data protection officers

Germany is the only member state that currently requires a DPO.

For almost 30 years, any company with at least five employees had to hire an outside consultant to review how personal data was handled. The employee threshold was raised to 10 in 2006 after a legislative reform on data protection.

Werner Hulsmann, a Bonn-based data protection officer who has been working as a freelance DPO since 2004, agrees there are some costs to small businesses but risk of a data breach or violation decreases.

The German experience is varied according to company type, size and whether or not it has locations in other countries.

A 2012 survey by the Bonn-based consultancy firm 2B Advice GmbH found that businesses with up to 50 employees spend just over €1,000 per year on a DPO. Cost increases to over €660,000 for companies with more than 50,000 employees.

The survey assessed 375 German companies, including 90 multinationals.

It noted that a large percentage of data violations come from simple negligence like leaving documents in a printer. Unsecured and unencrypted IT was another weakness. The unlawful processing of personal data was less frequently cited as a violation.

The survey also found that over 38 percent of all in-company data privacy officers do not feel sufficiently well informed well informed about data privacy violations within the company.

“It doesn’t matter how many people or employees work on personal data, they have to accept and follow the rules of data protection,” says Hulsmann.

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